All marketers are liars

“Successful marketers are just the providers of stories that consumers choose to believe. Marketing is the story marketers tell to consumers, and then maybe, if the marketer has done a good job, the lie consumers tell themselves and their friends. Those stories are no longer reserved for television commercials or junk mail. They are everywhere.”

All marketers are liars [Seth Godin]

Joe La Pompe

This website collects since apparently 1999 everything about ‘advertising twins’ as Joe calls it. Ads that are using exactly the same concept as someone else has used before already. Did they really copy the idea or was it just an unlucky coïncidence? You’ll probably never find out, but some ads sure have striking similarities. Some are almost 100% the same. I guess it is difficult to come up with something completely new every time, but then how come someone can find the doubles so easy where it seems to be very difficult to check the ads before they go ‘live’… or is that something agencies just don’t think about. Well for what’s worth, I had fun going through the site and I certainly was amazed of some of the similarities, but I don’t think I would change my agency for it even if it scored high in Joe’s Hit Parade.

See you on Live!

I thought I would never live to see it, but my mother is actually learning how to use a pc. It’s really cool for her to start doing that at the age of 60 and I wondered why she was so interested in this all of a sudden. And apparently it was my oldest son that started all this. As i wrote earlier in iKid, he’s really getting away with his iBook and that made her think. She’s afraid that tomorrow her grandchildren will be able to do a lot more with a pc than she can and that is not acceptable for her. And that’s just great. She’s already on Messenger and has also started mailing with her own account.

This also made me think of some of the services that will be included in Windows Live. As my mother is already on Messenger, I could now use the Windows Live Safety Center activity in Windows Live Messenger and do a remote scan of my mother’s pc and see the results of the scan. Like this I can advice her what to do if the problem didn’t get fixed through the scan already. That’s just great. Well mom, see you on Live!

If Google made cola …

Andy Beal at Marketing Pilgrim asked this on his blog, quote:

“It seems that just about any Google rumor is valid, even when the company denies it. We suggested the Google Cola is next, based on the fact that they have vending machines in the ‘plex.”

This made them thinking… what would a Google cola be like. You will find some funny answers over at Marketing Pilgrim, but the funniest one defenitely can be found at Google Insider and were made by Nathan Weinberg. Check them out!

The top 10 weirdest USB devices ever

Man, how do they come up with all that stuff? What’s the use? Well at least we had fun reading this. So check it out, this list should present the top 10 weirdest USB devices ever, if you could come up with an even more crazy one… tell me about it. Well here’s the list, if you want to see the images (you should) then click on the link.

  1. The USB vibrator
  2. The eye massager
  3. USB heating gloves
  4. USB flower pot speaker
  5. USB self destruction button
  6. USB massage ball
  7. USB heated slippers
  8. The USB ghost radar
  9. USB air darts
  10. George Foreman USB iGrill

Let the good times roll

With all the sites, blogs, journals, … you come across on the web, it is actually very rare that you stumble on a blog like the one from Guy Kawasaki: Let the good times roll. It’s not just a good post that got you to it, through RSS, but it’s one of those sites were you like reading one post after the other. Especially the top 10’s weren’t disappointing: check out ‘The Art of Recruiting‘, ‘The Art of Execution‘, ‘How to be a Demo God‘, ‘How to kick butt on a Panel‘, ‘The Art of Evangelism‘ and so on and so on. I hope you enjoy reading this blog as much as I did and I hope there’ more to come from this blogger (quote: “blogger. n. someone with nothing to say writing for someone with nothing to do”). Let the good times roll Guy!

Internet Explorer 7 Preview Beta 2

Since a few hour ago the beta 2 for IE7 is available for public download (so not MSDN subscription needed this time) at the Microsoft website. I’ve been looking forward to this for quite a while as the IE7 features shown on the web were looking pretty nice, so I installed it and will testdrive it for a while. Looks pretty neat … after you got past the download landing page.

Hilarious

That I hadn’t noticed this before, damn! I’m a true fan of Ricky Gervais since I first saw The Office on BBC and only now I found out that he has his own podcast together with his buddy in crime Stephen Merchant and special guest Karl Pilkinton who they say is ‘the funniest man alive in Britain today’ (which might just be very true). They are already halfway a series of 12, but I can only tell you to sign up for the podcast, as it is hilarious. [Via I-Wisdom]

And just today I stumbled across a real funny video on the internet which was promoted through the new MSN Video carrousel in the Windows Live Messenger beta. It’s a spoof on Apple ads by a guy who loves Mac (see also: sarcasm) as he points out himself. Yes I’ve had my share of laughter today :-).

The Museum of E-Failure

Those were the days. Well not really maybe, but I did have this nostalgic feeling when I took a look at the Museum of E-Failure posted on Ghostsites. When looking quickly at the list, I noticed and remembered especially Boo.com (with the virtual shopping assistant if I’m not mistaken), etour.com (that would guide you to interesting websites within your interests), moviecritic.com (of which I’ve written before, and that could have been a genuine web 2.0 experience if it were launched today… and created with AJAX or Ruby as some would say).

Anyway, it’s a really impressive list they’ve come up with. Very nice!

[ Via The Stalwart]